James Arthur Ray Awaits Sentencing Under the Cardinal Grand Cross

New Age guru and snake oil salesman millionaire James Arthur Ray, who schlepped (and is still schlepping) that utter crap The Secret has created quite the reality for himself.

On June 22 (Summer Solstice), in the cross hairs of the Cardinal Grand Cross and within triple eclipse season, Ray was found guilty by jurors on three counts of negligent homicide after a four-month trial in Camp Verde, Arizona.

A Full Moon lunar eclipse in Sagittarius June 15 closed a chapter on those taking the dangerous, tail-end Piscean era rhetoric of The Secret to the bank, and Ray is the one finally paying the piper.

Ray is awaiting sentencing by the judge in the case, which could range from probation to nine years in prison. There will inevitably be an appeal, but apparently Arizona does not often overturn convictions.

Three people died ("ascended"? "transcended"?) and 19 were hospitalized - some with permanent health damage - after a botched sweat lodge at Ray's "Spiritual Warrior" seminar near Sedona, Arizona in October 2009. Participants paid up to $10,000 for the honour of attending Ray's five-day workshop where, according to accounts, they were encouraged to shave their heads, play death-related games with Ray and fast for 36 hours before entering a faulty sweat lodge. Ray reportedly goaded participants into staying in the sweat lodge longer than they wanted to, advising them to ignore physical discomfort and push past their boundaries.

According to the Huffington Post, participants were told by Ray: "The true spiritual warrior has conquered death and therefore has no fear or enemies in this lifetime or the next, because the greatest fear you'll ever experience is the fear of what? Death. ... You will have to get a point to where you surrender and it's OK to die."

The dirty, pumped-up Neptunian bullshit of The Secret and its "creating your own reality/manifesting abundance" memes finally blew up after every New Ager and his/her dog dry humped the scheme for its very last penny. Unfortunately, people lost their lives in the process.

I wrote about it at the time:

October 14, 2009: New Age Dumbassery Turns Deadly 

October 19, 2009: More of Those Pesky Saturn in Virgo Details Surfacing And The Death Toll Rises To Three 

The deaths happened and the case hit the media as we were experiencing the horrendous Saturn in Virgo opposition series to Uranus in Pisces, with transiting Saturn in Virgo trine the Capricorn North Node.

The tail-end astrological Piscean era energy was at a point of extreme. It was overwhelming, confusing, exhausting, paralyzing. The blinding veils were thick and very, very dirty, and setting up the guru-student power dynamic so prevalent in New Age was absolutely ripe for detrimental effects. The Saturnine challenges at the time related to taking on one's own spiritual authority while having the most exacting, detail-conscious standards possible (Virgo) for anyone allowed to have influence over us - body, mind and spirit.

We were challenged to use Saturn in Virgo's earthy analytical skills to see through the dangerous, pseudo-spiritual trex being promoted by Ray and others like him, getting crystal clear on the old Piscean karmic loops and those taking them all the way to the bank.

"Saturn is a picky taskmaster in Virgo, making us go over and over things with a fine-toothed comb. Even the smallest rough edge, neglected detail or sloppy statement can put us way off course. Saturn in Virgo knows this. So we've been drilled on all those Virgo subjects. Yes, the usual ones like work, service, duty, communication, perfecting of details, cleanliness, organization, diet and holistic/systemic health and functioning, in general. But also on the finer points of Virgo. Honing our skills of personal discernment, defining and enforcing boundaries, separating the necessary from the unnecessary, rejecting those things that are damaging to our systems, defining our particular skills and service and applying them in the right ways in the right situations, removing our energy and influence from situations that are no longer right for us personally, determining preferences, stripping down to the essentials in self and life, learning and mastering ourselves."

With Saturn in Virgo in a series of four oppositions to Uranus in Pisces, grounding the too-good-to-be-true, over-the-top Uranus in Pisces energy was crucial. But the glamour and wishful thinking and Neptunian merry-go-round of The Secret phenomenon, amped up by the electric Uranian charge and multiple appearances on Aquarius Sun and New Age promoter Oprah Winfrey, proved too powerful.

Hundreds of thousands of people had found a new shortcut to riches, fame and material splendour, separating them from all those negative-thinking losers as they climbed to greatness. They became 'creating your own reality' foot soldiers, forming the newest rungs to be tapped in the pyramid scheme.

I'm sorry people lost their lives, and I'm sorry people were injured by this hideously, criminally irresponsible, vile little man and his fakery. But I'm not surprised. I could see from the get-go how out of control, how dirty, how manipulated this stuff was. It was and still is obscene.

I saw the ill effects it had on the people I came into contact with then and I still see them. I saw the glossed-over, over-simplified fervour of it, the robotically repeated memes, and I knew how dangerous it was. All New Age is this dangerous. Far from harmless, feel-good "spirituality," it brainwashes on a mass level, creating people who will fight tooth and nail to remain brainwashed. It lobotomizes. It disassociates. It incites people to hand over their hard-earned money to fake people telling them fake things. It takes people out of themselves and has them giving their personal power almost entirely over to those they consider higher up the spiritual hierarchy. It disconnects and detaches people from the importance and meaning of their physical lives and of the world and people around them. It's a con. 

The point is not that "The Secret works for some people." All pyramid schemes work for some of the people involved. The point is, this stuff was always a dangerous and irresponsible use of energy. It was never ethical. 

From October 13, 2008: The Secret Vs. My Use of Astrology (Or Why The Secret Doesn’t Do it For Me) 

 From April 21, 2009: Saturn in Virgo Calls Bullshit on The Secret/Law of Attraction Phenomenon 

At the time that the Ray sweat lodge deaths happened, Saturn was in Virgo - the same place it was 31 years prior when 918 people were killed in Guyana, most following another New Age guru Jim Jones in the search for utopia.

With Saturn in Virgo, cutting through pseudo-spiritual crap, leveling the abusive and dangerous hierarchies, focusing on the details that just don't add up and puncturing the glossy, glossy Neptunian bubble realities are a big part of the modus operandi.

Now that Saturn is in Libra within Cardinal Grand Cross formation, it appears that Ray is being forced by the courts to take the responsibility he eschewed. Let's see what they come up with as a sentence...